facing fears baby

10/23/17

hey so yeah p day is today for some reason. but from now on its always on tuesdays, no idea haha. but yeah this week was great!! we got transfer calls and i get to stay here in Lemoyne! and so does Elder Johnson! not very usual to stay with the trainer another transfer but I'm so stoked!! apparently we were like the only companionship that stayed together after training, excited to see what more i get to learn with this goon! 

this week was too awesome. so Bernard met with president and thats all getting figured out and we get to find out if we an give them a date for baptism soon! so stoked!! we might still need approval from the first presidency, still waiting for that call haha but its going great with them! its been such an amazing privilege to spend this time with them! the kids have picked up french so fast! so its a little bit easier to get to really know them and they're so much fun, seriously the awesomest kids. its so crazy how fast they learned, like first few visits we only got responses like yes and some nods from the kids but now we have full conversations and its awesome. but yeah, they're doing so great!

all our Haitian buddies are doing great! we are planning on giving Ronel a baptism date this week! super excited! and Asnel and Benjamin and they're whole family are doing so awesome! we still aren't sure how they're all connected in that house, theres like a ton of people living in the house and we think they're cousins or something… its different every time we talk to them haha. but ah i love Haitians. 

we went on exchanges again! so much fun to spend a day with good ol Elder Arnold in La Prarie. haha that was too much fun. we visited this guy who lives in the middle of nowhere and man i learned so much from him. little too much. he's a chilean named Antonio and he's the biggest philosopher i have ever met. we had an intense discussion and basically came out having learned to speak and write some Hebrew, minds blown, and agreeing to never speak of the things he told us. but he's an awesome investigator! he's so excited to get baptized. he taught me a lot on how truly incredible our dependence on God is. its amazing how much we take for granted. we hear the story of the ten leppers and how only one came back and i know I'm always like, what the heck those other nine why is there only one who came back to thank Christ?! they were literally given miracles!! but i find that i fit into the nine category more than i wish i could say, i could be thanking God so much more and doing so much better to express my gratitude for the enormous amount of blessings he's given me and that i tend to take for granted more often than not. that was something I've been focusing on this week! to fall into the category of that one lepper in all things. 

thursday we got to do our weekly service at the food bank and thats always so much fun. we meet up with our little pirate crew and fill each other in on our weeks. still learning all sorts of things in all sorts of tongues and thats been such an amazing opportunity! the people are so awesome. Mac is doing great! our pirate buddy interested in the church. the other day at the service he was like yo Halliday my wife is coming i want you to meet her! so i went over and talked to her for a sec and his eight year old son and then had to go help someone out and then she left and Mac yelled to me after i finished helping this lady out and he had tears in his eyes and he was like "bro did you see that?! she totally gave me a hug and a kiss!!" haha and he grabbed me and gave me a fat pirate man hug and we freaked out together haha what a fun time. he's having so many struggles with his family, his wife is a heavy drinker now and told him she wants to divorce and he hates the thought of doing that to the kids so he's doing everything he can to help her and help the kids and man, he's an incredible guy. we went to his house the other day to help him with his yard and he had no tools haha and we had to cut down this tree and we were like oh yeah we've got a hatchet in our car so we cut it down with the tiny hatchet and then he fed us and introduced us to his family and i fixed his chairs and some other random things and man, his gratitude for the small things is incredible. I've learned a ton from him. 

so we got a call from missionaries on the island saying that they've got a guy thats interested in the church in the hospital in Lemoyne so we were like oh yeah of course we'll go visit and see if we can do anything for him! so we called him and asked when visiting hours were and he sounded pretty fine! so we showed up and the hospital and he was outside, no casts or braces or signs of any physical injury so i was kinda confused, until after like five minutes of talking to him it kinda hit me that he and everyone around us are staying in a psychiatric ward and that he's actually insane haha and something i haven't ever really mentioned to anyone, but I'm totally so scared of psychiatric wards… just some experiences with some people haha but I'm working on it. the conversation led to why he was there and he was like "yeah they think I'm crazy, but its cool i know I'm not. I think my mind is just too smart for them to let me outta here man." and he continued on how he has a super mind and things like that. apparently theres a guy in his room that can make ping pong balls move around just with his mind. haha super cool guy, said he's working on his "desires not to slay people anymore" hahaha aaahhhh man i love facing fears. i was shaking and sweating the whole time we were talking with him. he looked at me in the middle of our conversation and was like yo hey man can you sit down? and patted next to him and i kinda laughed nervously and sat down next to him and he leaned super close to me and was like "bro, i totally had a dream about this the other night, a blonde guy like you came up and i told him to sit down… so i figured i would…" and i was like "then what happened…" and he just looked away and went on with his conversation and i sat there trying not to cry. he's cool, he just called our phone and Elder Johnson answered and he was like hey what about the other guy? and he wanted to only talk to me haha AH the Lord has funny ways of working with us. we are going back tomorrow night to chill in the psychiatric ward with him and his buddies. so stoked. 

service has been amazing here. we've been painting and renovating and moving and all sorts of fun things. this week i get to do my all-time favourite thing ever. shovelling rock babaayyyyy so stoked!! I've loved the service so much here. its so awesome to see how much of a difference it makes for people after we serve them and show them what we're really here to do. people get this idea that we're only here to dunk some bodies and meet a certain goal of baptisms or something crazy like that. we just want to invite others to Christ. whether that be through service or talking about beliefs and helping them with their own religious exercises or whatever. haha unless they just want to freaking bible bash. oh my i get my patience super tested when it comes to these people. haha just the other day we showed up at the wrong house for an appointment and this old lady showed up and went off on what we believed and all that haha what a fun experience. to be told what you believe hahaha AH i love the tests of patience the Lord has been sending me. but yeah, I've been loving the service here. 

everything has been too awesome though! i love it here so much!! everyone is doing so great! i keep learning more every day. the languages are all coming pretty good haha Arab is still impossible… but its so cool to see how big of an impact language has here. people become so much more open when you speak their language, i love it! but yeah, i love it here so much!! i can't exaggerate that enough. i love you guys all so much!! sorry i always forget to take pictures haha I'm working on it. love you all!! 

yeah so we spent hours scraping paint off this thing and the paint wasn't coming off no matter what we did and we had to go after like three hours and looked at it and kind of just cried and left. 

yeah sorry we really are the worst when it comes to pictures. here is a picture i drew. I'm working on ways to deal with impatience and frustration with our ward council. felt good to draw one of their faces on my foot. not quite Christlike i know, I'm working on it. 

love you goons

We got an email from your mission pres about Christmas and they say we need to get your Christmas stuff shipped pretty early-maybe in the next week or so!  So, what would you like for Christmas?  They recommended ordering through amazon Canada because it doesn’t go through customs. but we can mail you stuff that’s like Home made, or not expensive so it doesn’t get held up in customs and you don’t have to pay customs. We can also Venmo you if there’s something you want to buy there. But that’s not very Christmas-y.  So that’s the Christmas deal. :) 

     Did I send you the picture of charters cake??? It was amazing. We got leftovers and I sort of tunneled through like a gopher and ate the yummy insides. Haha. 

       Getting pretty cold there?  We are gettin nice and almost cool. Are you getting everyone’s emails from the mission? Charters came a couple days ago, he sounds happy. 

    Reaghan went to a huge dance last night in costumes, she went as princess buttercup and a kid came dressed as Wesley (princess bride) and he came up and said something like as you wish to her-it was awesome. Haha. 

      Archie says that the guys going to Madagascar got reassigned because of the bubonic plague. No joke. Is that crazy???? Bubonic plague??!! It’s like the end of times or something!  

       Caden made Kennadie drive his huge truck the other day-haha, it was garbage day so the streets were extra narrow. He said if she drove a large difficult vehicle then the Camry would seem easier. Sadly when I took her driving she still took turns super fast and drove through a stop sign 🙄 we are hiring professionals to take her driving because she is so scary. 

       Work is great-really busy and that’s good. Dad is working lots of overtime too. So it’s busy here but we really enjoy our time together. ❤️

oh really? oohhh thats probably cause the snow storms stop air traffic and mail and everything. maybe haha i have no idea. but christmas haha i have no idea!! hmmm for christmas… just give each other fantastic presents and send me lots of pictures and videos of you all opening them! that'd be perfect for me!! don't worry about sending anything! it'll be a good enough  gift to get to see all of you and talk to you on Skype!! so crazy!! ahhhhh speaking of presents, i totally went to this suuuuper cool thrift place owned by this guy I've talked to a few times and we've become pretty tight and he gave me a killer deal on these records for reaghan! its a simon and Garfunkel record and Billy Joel and Harry Nilsson all for $10! he was super nice. I'm letting mario borrow them to listen on his record player but i totally realized they could get totally ruined in the mail… any ideas on that?? hahah Charter's cake looks INCREDIBLE!!!! its not too cold yet! i can't remember if i told you but i bought the gold bond and it works GREAT!!! hahahaha aahhh reaghan told me about the dance! TOO FUNNY!!! that makes me so happy she's going. she probably made that boy's day hahaha. but yeah i heard about the madagascar deal! so crazy!! i actually have some buddies that were there! so crazy. hahahahha wait Caden let kennadie drive?!??!?! wow. i love that kid. haha shell learn someday.